Ministers have been accused of failing jobless young people, after falling far short of a promise to recruit 30,000 new apprentices to the civil service.
A senior Conservative said the government had not made achieving the pledge “a priority” – and criticised an attempt to blame the embarrassing shortfall on Covid-19.
In fact, the target was set four years ago – to ensure that Whitehall “leads by example” – and only 16,155 apprentices had been recruited by the time of the lockdown in March.
It follows a wider failure to sign up 3 million apprentices across the economy between 2017 and 2020, with only around 2.2 million recruited.
Robert Halfon, the Tory chair of the Commons Education Committee, told The Independent: “There is no excuse for this. It’s got to change.”
The Prospect trade union, representing civil servants, said the low number of recruits was “symptomatic of a wider malaise at the heart of government” in planning for the future.
And Toby Perkins, Labour’s shadow minister for apprenticeship, said: “Young people have been worst hit by the rise in unemployment.
“The government should be looking to increase training and employment opportunities as a result of the pandemic, but instead it’s putting them on pause.”
A Cabinet Office strategy document from January 2017 said: “This government will ensure at least 30,000 apprenticeship starts in the civil service by 2020, annually delivering 2.3 per cent of the workforce in England as apprenticeship starts.
“We are leading by example in the public sector and have been instrumental in the design, development and delivery of at least fifteen new apprenticeship standards to date.
“Our apprentices will gain the transferable skills needed to succeed in the modern economy, while contributing to our manifesto commitment to create three million high quality new apprenticeships across the country by 2020.”
By March this year, the 16,155 apprenticeship recruits made up only 2.1 per cent of the workforce, not 2.3 per cent.
Yet Julia Lopez, a Cabinet Office minister, told MPs that it had been “on track to meet those targets”, adding: “Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, that has been delayed slightly to April.”
But Mr Halfon said, of the claim that the coronavirus was to blame: “It may be partly true, but the government has taken its eye off the ball.”
He called for every public sector job to be advertised for an apprentice and for the “postcode lottery” of some departments doing well, while others failed to act, to be tackled.
“The government needs to make this a priority, to meet this target and then to exceed the target – to make it a first resort, not a last resort,” the committee chairman said.
Garry Graham, deputy general secretary of Prospect, said: “The failure of the government to meet its own apprenticeships target is symptomatic of a wider malaise at the heart of government.”
Calling for a proper “skills audit”, he added: “We have heard occasional warm words from the government but see very little in terms of concrete action.”
The wider target of 3 million apprenticeships was set in 2015 by the then chancellor, George Osborne, but has been dogged by a falling number of placements.
There were just 319,000 starts in the academic year to last July, down from 375,800 in 2017-18 – which was itself a 24 per cent fall on the previous year.
The problems have been blamed on a levy placed on every large company or public-sector organisation, of 0.5 per cent of their payroll, to pay for apprenticeship courses.
It involved an end to public funding of a lot of workplace training – and employer groups complained the changes were bureaucratic and inflexible.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “We are firmly committed to recruiting 30,000 civil service apprentices by April.”
The government also said it had introduced payments of £2,000 to employers who hire new apprentices, after missing the wider 3 million target.
